Enabling Blockchain to Fight against Imperialism in the Caribbean feat. Stefen Deleveaux
This week I spoke with Stefen Deleveaux (@stefdelev), the president of the Caribbean Blockchain Alliance (CBA). The CBA is an organization that advocates for the use of blockchain in Caribbean, educates developers , and collaborates with regulators to create regulatory frameworks in the region. One of the purposes of the organization is to help create a more coherent Caribbean alliance based on solidarity help protect the interests of the region. During the interview we spoke about the...
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Transcript
Hello, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And for today's interview, I have a special guest. His name is Stefan Delavaux. He is the president of the Caribbean Blockchain Alliance, which is an educational and public policy NGO, advocating for blockchain within, The Caribbean. So, hey, Stefan. How are you doing?
Hey. Doing pretty good. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Of course.
So obviously this conversation is going to, talk a lot about The Caribbean and, especially the relationship between The Caribbean and why you would think about using Blockchain for any sort of reason in The Caribbean, but to preface the whole conversation I think it would be good for people like me included, who don't know too much about The Caribbean. Maybe if you could give a quick history of the Caribbean Islands and its link especially to colonialism and imperialism of Western countries.
That's a heavy question, but sure.
Easy. Real quick.
I think what most people know when they think about The Caribbean is, you know, a bunch of different islands. Very small islands kinda scattered, mostly black people. So, obviously, in the same way that slaves came to America, same thing happened in The Caribbean. I think people forget that sometimes. But, you know, it got it mostly got established through slavery. Well, you know, even before that, they had the indigenous people. Columbus pretty much wiped them out. Where I am actually in The Bahamas is where Columbus first landed. You know, all that craziness happened. And then, settlers came in.
Say it? Well, he was very nice to everyone he, encountered. Very, very lovely man.
So moving forward, I mean, you know, fast forward. So after slavery, you had, and obviously these countries were mostly British owned, some were Spanish owned, some were French owned, but for the most part, they were British owned. So when slavery ended in Great Britain, it ended here as well in The Caribbean for the most part. But those those economies were basically plantation based. And after slavery, it kind of shifted in many different ways to overtime to tourism. So in most of the Caribbean countries, it's Anywhere from 50% to 90% actually, even 100% tourism based, And you have a few scattered countries like, you know, Cuba, Puerto Rico that are that have decent amount of agriculture. Jamaica a bit as well, but but it's still largely tourism based. So given that you you have this idea of when you have when you have such a hardcore dedication to tourism, you kind of remove any kind of industry, any move towards diversification of your economy. You just kinda making sure rich Americans and rich Europeans come in and spend not even a lot of money, just a little bit of money and then leave. Right? So, basically, our entire structure economically has been kind of on kind of on that focus. I don't know if that that somewhat answers your question or if you want me to go more into any kind of historical stuff. Well, yeah. I think in particular, maybe you can talk a little bit about the relationship
of The United States and The Caribbean, just it being the the largest neighbor next door and you know the obvious influence that the American, government and American policy has had over The Caribbean. I mean even, you know, of course, during, even when European still had colonies in The Caribbean and afterwards as well, The US has had still a dominant, yeah, dominant force in the in the region.
Oh, yeah. For sure. And that's what happens with soft power. Right? Basically, everything they say is kinda what we do. Kwame Ture actually has a great quote. I think he said something along along the lines of whenever America says jump, Caribbean leaders say how high. And that's that's pretty much how it's always been. Because even even if you look at policy like drug policy, for the most part, most of these countries want to, at least to criminalize or legalize marijuana in some way. They don't because there's this fear that America not even not even an an unfounded fear. The Americans basically said, no. You can't do this. And it's kinda crazy because, obviously, it's not just, oh, we don't want them engaging in drugs in any way. And even even just cannabis. It's like, oh, well, if all our states are are legalizing slowly, then we wanna control the market. And for you guys to do it means that we have competition, and and we don't want that. And and that's something with both The US and Europe where anything to do anything where we could be a threat in terms of competition, they basically bring in their power and say, no. You you can't do that. It's it's kind of and they they organize it through things like sanctions. Obviously, Cuba is the biggest example, and that's obviously for multiple reasons. But even in terms of finance and, yes, and and drug policy as well, you have blacklists, which are the EU is known for blacklisting Caribbean countries all the time. And that's something where they usually blame that on on tax avoidance, tax policy, and things like that. But if you actually look at the statistics, if you combine every quote, unquote tax haven, in The Caribbean, they probably, amount to maybe 2% of global tax avoidance. Because it's pretty much all done in the in the large countries. Like, in The US, you have Delaware, you have The UK, Luxembourg, Jersey. It's all it's, like, 98, 99% of it is in The US and and Europe, but yet they single out The Caribbean and basically hit us with blacklists, make trade, finance, everything interest rates are very hard for us. And it's all because, well, one, it's because we're small black countries and you know what happens with that. And then two, they don't want a competition in any kind of form. So it's just like it basically is colonialism in a way. It's just financial colonialism instead of, like, settler or agricultural colonialism. Right? So it's kind of a it's it's interesting where it's like it's the colonialism is historical, but it's still ongoing at the same time. So where you we basically went from slavery to kind of, like, the settler based, and now it's just financial for the most part or policy based.
Right. They it seems that the The Caribbean seems to play this role sometimes as, like, basically the, like, the excess of the, I guess, corruption in these Western countries sort of flows into the Caribbean whenever they need, like, a new tax haven or something like that. Even though it's not like, there's plenty of course tax loopholes in, in The US and Europe but if there's one particular reason why they need to go outside, they somehow find a way to use the Caribbean to do that. And that's, I guess, sort of the nature of imperialism where it's, yeah, manufacturing different types of, situations in which you know, using the markets in which they're able to take advantage of these small countries with less power and less influence.
Yeah. And it's like, basically, if you come to a Caribbean country as a ridiculously wealthy person, they will, they will definitely roll out the red carpet for you because they see you as and it's kinda sad, right, but they our leadership for the most part, they see those kind of people as kind of saviors, even if they end up not really adding anything to our economy or to our culture or whatever. It's just, like, it's ingrained in them that, you know, we have to cater to the rich white people at every front. And and and you can kinda see it because when you have when you're so based in tourism, that's kind of what you're looking for anyway. So it kinda just spills over into everything else. So you have, like, you know, policies where if you buy a house, you get, like depending on which country it is, you get residency, you get, citizenship. And again, that's not that's not something that's all bad. There are uses for that, but it's the excess where it happens. So it it it's pretty interesting.
That's I guess this sort of leads to to my next question already, but I guess what are some of the biggest issues that the Caribbean Islands are facing today? Of course, The Caribbean involves a lot of different islands and a lot of different countries, but I guess if you could summarize it, of course, quickly for people to to set the stage.
Oh, man. What a start. Like today. So, I mean, this is the obvious obvious one. Right? Just that COVID has happened, and now travel is at a low. And because we're so focused on tourism, it's been completely devastating for all of our countries just because, you know, if you're 70 to 90% based on on tourism, I think, Aruba is actually a 100% or as close to a 100% as possible, and nobody's coming in. You literally have no economy. So imagine just imagine that and the fact that for the most part and you because I'm in The Bahamas. Right? And a lot of people think of The Bahamas as a wealthy country, but that's only because we have a lot of for the most part, we do have a lot of wealthy foreigners living here, but the average person is quite is pretty poor. So and if most and if tourism employs the majority of people and nothing's happening in tourism, it's a lot of unemployed people, it's a lot of jobless I mean, sorry, a lot of people with no income at all. And that that kind of just plays to the the bigger idea of diversification and decentralization. If if we have multiple, you know, routes of of business, of economics, then we wouldn't have this kind of problem. And just to add to that in terms of the economics, you have and this kinda combines with the issues with finance I mentioned earlier. Finance and banking and trade is, again, it's kind of all catered to the outsiders. So we don't really have much infrastructure in terms of, you know, The Caribbean and, like, actual Caribbean people. So say, for example, if I wanted to send a bank wire, right, to Jamaica from The Bahamas, my wire goes from here to New York, JPMorgan in New York City, and then goes down to Jamaica. Like, imagine a lower middle even just a lower middle class person that that trying to regularly send money to someone else. That adds so much time, fees. It it raises the cost exponentially. So even regular banking is is, I mean, banking has its problems everywhere. Right? But here it's kind of it's in access. Obviously, you have, you know, Western Union and things like that, but they still charge so much. So it it almost feels like every access point or every aspect of our economy is kind of restrictive slash, it just it just kinda takes from people at every point.
Mhmm. It it's sort of like this idea that it's expensive being poor.
100%. Because because every institution is extractive. Right? And especially when you don't even you don't really have ownership in your own economy. That means you're at the will and whim of everyone else pretty much. And if every business model, every every financial model is extractive, then you're screwed. And that's pretty much the state that we're in for the most part. And then, you know, just to add to that, we deal with a kind of it is pretty neocolonial where our leaders don't really don't necessarily look out for us for the most part. They kinda just look for where the money's coming in. And I guess by default, that's what they have to do in some ways. But even in terms of government services, obviously, depending on which country, but they're generally pretty low. Like, departments the best way to put it is the public sector is completely inefficient. Just being blunt. And our utilities completely inefficient. Power outages are are normal. Internet outages are normal. So it's kind of I I know I'm not putting Caribbean in the best light right now, but these these are these are regular issues that, you know, people coming in, tourists may not necessarily see. But for the regular person on the ground, it's it's it's tough. Yeah. And, yes, we do live where people vacation, but that that living aspect isn't always easy. You know? So it's just a lot a lot of different issues that kinda come together.
It sounds I I'm I'm wondering, is the are the Caribbean Island Governments are they similar in the American government at the moment, I guess, in that they're not providing sort of very much, economic support for people who may not have their job who may have lost their jobs because of, the corona crisis?
So in that, it it's hard to say yes and no, right, just because I will say for the most part, they have been trying. There have been a lot of, programs specifically for, you know, unemployed people. People blow the poverty line in general during this time. But at the same time, the capacity just isn't there. Right? So if governments are run by taxes and nobody's making money, then there are no taxes, which means there's no capacity to actually, really help anybody out at the end of the day. And that's really where the difficulty lies, and that results in us continually having to so even since the financial crisis, which completely collapsed all of our economies for the most part, ruin growth, and put us all in debt. And we've been dealing with these high levels of debt ever since, and this this kinda just rapidly exacerbates the problem. So we have these multiple countries that are incredibly in debt, and that just adds a kind of desperation really to leadership because it's like, well, we don't have much in our economy and we're in debt. There aren't many things we can do. So that just kind of opens up the region to, you know, these big players, these big countries that are like, okay. Well, if you have no options, then you're gonna take wherever you give. So it's it's just kind of a it's basically a vicious cycle every time a a and we know that capitalism is based on booms and busts. It's based on crisis. So whenever is a whenever there's a crisis, our situation just gets worse. And in addition to that, obviously, you have, like, these natural disasters. We The Bahamas, for example, is still recovering from hurricane Dorian last year. And these things just kinda compound on each other. Right? So it's like it it does start to feel like we're we're we're kinda clawing down with no way out. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's a very it's it's a very difficult situation, and it just it it'll it takes a lot of effort and it will take a lot of effort going forward to to really revamp things and try to, you know, basically have some kind of a recovery.
Yeah. And at the moment, is there any sort of, like, Pan Caribbean, like, organizations, like, in the same way that maybe there's, like, the European Union, although in The Caribbean, I imagine there would be something different.
Yeah. So there's the main one is Caracom, which is just the commerce slash trade based, organization. It's it's been around for a while, to varying degrees of success. I I think one of the biggest issues here is that we since, like, for example, we are mostly based on tourism. So there are a lot of countries that are kind of competitive. They're kind of competing for tourist dollars at the end of the day, and then some, like, The Bahamas came in. Bermuda, if we count Bermuda, are more finance based. So it's it's a lot of, you know, small players vying for the same, the same dollars, basically. So it it is hard to so the they've they've there's been a lot of efforts. They've definitely tried to, you know, bring more unity and and bring more union trade economics. There is a the CSME, which is basically the single market in The Caribbean where these countries use the same dollar, the same currency, but the larger players I mean, the larger Caribbean countries don't aren't really involved in that. So it is it is still very scattered. Yeah. That that that kind of adds to the issue of when we deal with larger countries, larger players, we're not unified, we're not we're we're pretty scattered, so there's no there's no block that we I mean, it is a block, but it's not an effective block. So block being, like, BLLC, or we can say or we can stand together and say, no. We're not accepting this blacklist or we're not accepting this sanction or something like that. It's pretty much in a lot of ways still every every man for himself.
Exactly. I was gonna say it's like it's a situation where it's a collection of countries, I mean, that are they're getting pounded basically on the marketplace, and then they view themselves in a very, capitalistic type of way where, you know, you view yourself as the individual and, like, you as if you are a, you are a competitor against other everyone else that is like you as a competition, and you sort of you just assume that that everyone else is a competition and not really necessarily meant to be trust unless there's, you know, specific things going on. But so that yeah. It it eliminates the ability for, for solidarity.
Gotcha. That's a 100 that's a 100%. So it's really interesting, right? Because we are at the end of the day, we are very capitalist minded. Everyone, you know, the same the same thing you find in in The US, for example, this kind of obsession with billionaires, this kind of, you know, claw up to do to whether it's hustle mentality, which to be fair is necessary often, because they're in a lot of ways, there are no other options. Right? But that kind of not necessarily exploitative, but, you know, do whatever you need to do to survive even if it's, you know, at the at the cost of someone else. So I I like to say that The Caribbean is socialist minded in terms of, like, we do have when we can, we do have, you know, we do have welfare. We do have something like Social Security. A few countries have some level of universal health care. So there is that, and I will say I I I applaud that. I think that's awesome. So we have that. So we're socialist minded in in that regard, but without the solidarity. That solidarity is completely missing. And then we're capitalist minded, but without the wealth. So it's like we we take aspects of both, but we don't take the best aspects. So solidarity is something that's absolutely necessary for us and and something that we're going to have to build, in the long run. And then, you know, there's no there's no wealth in the country for the regular person. So you you can't even really be a capitalist at the end of the day if you wanted to. But yet, there's still but the but a lot of people are still stuck in that mentality. Right? So it it's just it's just a weird kind of amalgamation of different ideologies into one.
Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, I wanna be sure that more content like this can be created. You can donate to my efforts through Patreon. So So if you go to patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist, you can donate starting at $3 a month to help me out and join the 15 other patrons. At the moment, I've spent more on this project than I've ever earned from it due to all the hosting costs that I gotta pay for, so any amount really helps. And I've already released the first short episode of the Patreon exclusive q and a series where I give my view on the question, is there a socialist blockchain? And, of course, I'll be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain does not need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. And so if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. If you can't help out financially, no worries. You can instead subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and leave a positive review. Additionally, you can share the episode with any comrades that you think would be interested in the topic. And finally, be sure to check out the show notes where there'll be a couple of links where you can learn a little bit more about what it's like in The Caribbean and donate to the CBA. Alright. So I think we have a good understanding or a relative understanding of what the situation is like in The Caribbean and sort of what are the economic factors and the effect on imperialism and colonialism in the past and how it's affecting it today. But so then I'm curious what you think are some of the ways that blockchain and cryptocurrency can fight back against this type of situation that that The Caribbean is currently in?
So there are a few ways. Right? I mean and it it is largely economic based. So just the same issue I brought up earlier with banking. Banking is just absolutely terrible here. And there aren't many options for aren't many good options for inter inter regional finance, and inter regional trade. So I think something like so there's a company called Bit in Barbados. They're actually the first, blockchain company in the region. And one one of the founders actually helped me start, this in general, but something they've been focused on for a long time, in addition to CBDCs, central bank digital currencies, is the idea of, Caribbean settlement network. So just to backtrack, the and I I don't know if you've seen, but The Bahamas actually launched its its CBDC, I believe, last month. It's called Sand Dollar. Oh, nice. I actually didn't see that. Yeah. So it's it's Sand Dollar just launched and then the Eastern Caribbean region which is like a small collection, very small collection of of a few of the smaller Caribbean countries in the Eastern Region. They they're launching those pretty soon. I think it's still being built out. So I honestly, that's gonna be it doesn't seem like a big deal to a lot of people. I think it's gonna be huge just because, you know, banking's terrible and there aren't many options for, the unbanked. Just having a CBDC and, you know, these small countries will mean that there's a lot more options for for people to do banking and people actually have a stake in the economy where it's just much easier for them to buy and sell things, much easier for them to trade. And then going beyond that, if you hopefully get to the point where all of us have CBDCs, you can you can increase the ease and the availability of trade and finance just sending money through instead of going to a bank and going to Western Union, you I can just send my sandal in The Bahamas to, whatever they're gonna build in Jamaica, for example, and that'll all be based on the blockchain. Is it currently available for,
like, the average person in, in Bahamas?
Yeah. It, the process isn't the easiest, but it is launched and is available. And I know they because this this came from directly from the central bank. Right? So they had wanted to do a huge, like, educational campaign, which they didn't get to do because of COVID. But I think next year, they'll be able to properly, push for it, which means that the onboarding of people so and just to give it an an idea, The Bahamas even is is an archipelago, so it's based off of different islands, which makes things like trade and movement even harder. Right? So especially for the people in those outer islands, and because of derisking, which is when, you know, a lot of the corresponding banks have been pulling out, a lot of them are left with, again, no real options except for, you know, trying to use cash and bring it on a plane or send something on a boat or something. So just so even just for this country in particular, having a CBC is gonna be really helpful. And then just the idea of yeah. Just just the idea of access really for everybody, including, you know, the the people who just got here, some of the a lot of the immigrants who have to send money back and forth. But, yeah, just for the average person, just especially for the unbanked, it's gonna be it's gonna be good. I I think there's gonna be a lot more adoption next year hopefully. And kind of the interesting thing about CBDC is is that it will increase because there's obviously still a lot of pushback to digital currencies and things like that, but it'll slowly increase people's openness to it, which opens them up more to, you know, Bitcoin and other things like that if they if they so choose to to even just try it out. So so I think the idea because, obviously, we've been we've been doing education for so long, mostly in terms of blockchain use cases, but also in just cryptocurrency in general. So I think it'll just make all of our processes easier in terms of education, getting people involved, getting them to try out things like staking in Ethereum or NFTs or hopefully more and more DAOs in the future. And then just back to the question of how blockchain can help, and how I mentioned that most of our ministries and departments are completely scattered. There's no so for example, if the system where I get my passport, the system where I get my, you know, insurance card, my national insurance card system where I get my driver's license are all completely separate, and they're all largely analog. So you can imagine how much of a nightmare that could be. So just adding these adding adding blockchains to these systems in a macro sense would just increase the efficiency by leaps and bounds. And it would make it it would make living here less of a challenge at the end of the day. Because because most of our issues are in terms of, you know, a normal everyday person trying to maybe start a small business or something like that or even just engaging in the economy in general, it's such a hassle because they have to go back and forth, they have to bring in a bunch of documents and having something like decentralized identity or or at the very least having these systems a bit more connected, it would revolutionize the the entire region, honestly. Like, these these wouldn't be these wouldn't be small implementations. It would be something that benefits everybody all at once. So, yeah, the impact would be pretty big. You think that the,
like, the particular nature about blockchain, you know, being, like, an open platform and being, yeah, I mean, I guess decentralized, but also being able to connect many different, actors. If it were to be implemented in a place like Bahamas, it just has so much more of an impact compared I mean, just in particular considering if it's still, you know, using analog. I mean, I would imagine a little bit easier potentially than it would be if each then agency were to create its own, digital database on its own and then, like, create all these different APIs or whatever in order to connect them together. And, like, that'll take probably a lot more time than it would be to implement a system that is already inherently meant for sharing data.
Exactly. That's that's 100% right. Because you have it's the typical leapfrog aspect, right, where you can just kind of bypass what people have been using for, say, twenty, thirty years and just jump into what what people are using now. Even if you look at let's use banks for an example. Most of them still use very old, systems from, like, the seventies or the eighties just because changing it or adding onto it is so costly and it takes so much time. So if you take a system that that hasn't really been updated since, like, the seventies and eighties again and just kind of bypass the kind of digital database aspect and put everything I mean, you still will probably end up using a database in some form, but it'll prob it'll be, like, connected to the blockchain maybe just through hashes or whatnot. But that that automatically has that kind of connectivity, the interoperability, the security that has not been there. So, yeah, it it makes total sense to just kind of to to skip over the the middleman pretty much and just go into blockchain. I I
imagine that a lot of these countries will be able to leapfrog, just currently existing digital systems and I hope potentially put to shame even more what is the American system.
That that's the hope for sure.
Shame the Americans, please.
Working on it. But I mean, even even in things like the utilities. So most of our countries have one, maybe at most two electricity companies, typically state owned, but they they usually don't have enough capacity, which is why there's so many issues or they have, you know, very old generators. Of course, it's all fossil fuel based even though we live in a very sun rich region. Just just the trying to push into not only more renewable energy, but also more decentralized kind of distribution of power. It's it's taken really long, but I think with all these pushes happening right now and just the understanding that, you know, hurricanes are such a threat and are getting more and more of a threat eve every year. So we kinda have to like, I've been pushing microgrids, for example, a lot at just these kind of technologies where you can actually put blockchain on top of it and make that whole ecosystem easier and more efficient. It will provide such a great use case for The Caribbean in general. It it it's a no brainer, really. We just have to get there. And it it obviously, it's difficult when, you know, the countries are in debt. There's not a lot of available money, but it's kind of it's it's necessary.
Mhmm. Knowing this, what your ideas are for, you know, using this technology to fight back against imperialism and improving the conditions in, The Caribbean. What was the original intent of creating the Caribbean Blockchain Alliance, the CBA?
So initially, CBA was more of a, community, just in terms of because it technically started 2017, but things things were kind of in play even a few years before that, where, you know, a few people who were in the space at the beginning were trying to, like, you know, just bring people together. At that time, there weren't many people, so there wasn't much happening. But especially by 2017, there are more and more people a lot more interested. So we kinda just gathered everyone into a group into a WhatsApp group. And then from there, we kind of developed our mandates, which were half split between education and public policy, which was which is like advocacy, lobbying, even though I hate that word. It it's kind of what we're stuck doing because we have to basically convince the governments and regulators to to embrace the industry and make it as easy as possible to actually utilize these technologies. And also they go hand in hand. Right? Because you have to educate the people first, before we can do any kind of proper push. So that's been that's been ongoing, but it hasn't really, ramped up until this year. Not only because, because of COVID, but also because I I was working a nine to five, so it wasn't totally there wasn't that much time to really go into this. Recently left my job
Congrats.
In the middle of COVID craziness. But I mean, just and that was in that was in July, actually. And just what we've been able to do and and build upon the foundation of since then, it's been a lot. So I think 2021 is gonna be insane for us. We're already we just partnered with an EdTech platform, called Project Jaguar. The founder is based in Antigua. We're also working on a a lot somewhat larger scale education push that I can't really talk about yet, but I think it's good. We're we're just increasing the amount of education being done, especially looking forward to next year. And also, we're trying to build working groups between regulators of the different countries to come together and and properly build the framework. So to explain that you have, for the most part, Bahamas, Bermuda, and Barbados that have largely, well, not largely embrace embrace blockchain, but they're getting there. Obviously, Bahamas already has, a CBDC, which is awesome. But you have these three countries that and that's largely because a lot of people in these two countries have been involved in the space for a while. And and we've been pushing pretty strongly. The other countries, not as much. There there's still even even the larger ones like Jamaican, Trinidad have have kind of been looking into it, but haven't really embraced it yet. So, really, at the end of the day, my goal for CBA is to really, in the same way that that CARICOM is supposed to work, really unify the region in terms of how we use the technology, what we do with it, and just embracing it in general. So it's definitely a lofty goal because working with politicians is always fun. But what I'm hoping for is to kind of get all these countries together, get the regulators and and government agents together to pretty much build a a regional regulatory framework, so that everyone together is is utilizing this, and and getting into the industry and using the the technology. And it doesn't have to be everyone's doing the exact same thing, but at least, you know, they're using the the same framework or the same skeleton of the of the framework. Right? I know I know it's gonna be a difficult battle, but I think it's worthwhile. Because again, the last thing we want obviously, we want countries to start using Blockchain and start, like, adding more education in blockchain, adding more developers and whatnot, but we also don't want it to be piece by piece. We don't want, you know, three countries doing everything while the rest are just kind of scattered. So if we can eventually bring everyone in the same boat, it'll it'll allow us to kind of rise as a region and to create that kind of block where we stand together and we we kind of jump into the fourth industrial revolution together rather than kind of getting hit by everyone else.
So one of the things that I've, noticed and I guess realized about blockchain is that, I mean, the fact that in order for it to work, it requires, like, a particular network effects. Like, it requires a lot of different actors to agree to actually want to use it and to come together and to do it. Sort of the the nature of blockchain, yeah, it forces these parties that can, in certain situations, it forces these parties who consider themselves competitors in a certain way to come together and to cooperate in particular ways. Of course, you know, afterwards, I mean, there there is still obviously a form of competition because we are under, you know, just the economic, under capitalism. But at least for that, you know, for a bit, you have to cooperate for for something in order to, you know, decide what are gonna be your standards for data that you want to transfer across different parties and etcetera, etcetera.
Cooperation should be the end goal for everything. Right? There there should be that kind of sense of we have to do this together, especially when you're so small and weak by yourself. And that's the beauty of Blockchain where it it doesn't matter who you are. You still kinda have to work together at the end of the day. So I I I think it it kinda goes on and on. I think it it's it's a great pairing, really, for for what we want at the end of the day.
So what does the blockchain space in The Caribbean look like at the moment? You've mentioned there's, now the CBC CBDC that just came out in The Bahamas, and then there's this company called Bit. How does that all look like?
So it's it's still pretty small, but it is growing kinda quickly. Like, right now, we have a 160 people in in CBA, at least in in the kind of broader community. Most of it, like, say the same example, BIT BIT was always about payments, but also CBDCs. And then, you have is with some other companies that are I think one of the one of the big pushes right now is agriculture. So there's, for example, Farm Credably in Jamaica, Emerge, which is in a few countries actually that are focused on the kind of supply chain aspect that that kind of farm to fork as as how they call it just to make sure the just just the verification of of the agriculture supply chain process. And those are still, you know, growing use cases, but I I think that one's gonna be incredibly important, not just to agriculture, but also just general trade. And, again, just for the end goal one of the end goals of increasing trade increasing interregional trade, making that whole process more efficient more and more easy. There are few that are working on, say, fractionalizing real estate, putting land titles on blockchain, which which is also would would also have a massive, impact here because there's still a lot of issues in terms of well, when you have analog systems and you're trying to deal with things like who owns who owns this land, you get you just get chaos. Right? Because there's no verification. It's open to corruption. There are a lot of just kind of basic issues that we still have to get past before we can actually even ask a lot of the questions, that the larger countries ask, like, you know, what is ownership really? We still have to get to that point. So it's it's it it's quite a few small companies and small use cases that are coming up. Obviously, a lot have to do with finance. But even in terms of the more practical, use cases, it it's small, but I think even within a few years, it'll be a lot bigger.
Yeah. Do you think that, particular tax advantages have attracted, a lot of these, you know, cryptocurrency or blockchain companies to The Caribbean?
Oh, yeah. Maybe not in a massive way, but I mean, look at Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is kinda known as as one of the crypto havens now because you have a lot of people from The US well, from The US Mainland, moving to Puerto Rico for the tax benefits. And it it does happen kind of throughout. And like I said before, in some ways, it is beneficial, but and only in some ways. In a lot of ways, it's more extractive than anything else. But this is this is kind of how we're set up. Right? So we kinda have to deal with it. But it I I do try to be as understanding as possible in terms of stuff like that because at the very least, I think we should make sure that if we do bring in people that have blockchain companies, we need to make sure that they do actually add to our economy, that they do give back, whether it's by and not and not just through hiring. Right? But also, like, you know, make sure people do education push campaigns and things like that. Something something where there's mutual benefit or that some benefit for everybody and not just, hey. Come here so you can avoid, you know, your tax paying your taxes. That kind of thing. The you can't leave it as purely, an extractive relationship. Exactly. There has to be there has to be some some mutual benefit which which, I guess, again, could be helpful because I think one of the biggest problems in The Caribbean in terms of, like, the everyday average person is that there's not much exposure, to what's going on outside the country or outside The Caribbean. So a lot of these questions about tech or economics, they're they're not really seen or experienced by the everyday person. So, it and that that's that's why I feel that the education push for CBA is so important just to get people to understand. Even if they don't end up using blockchain or or any of the cryptocurrencies, it's like at least understanding what these things are or even just understanding what the point of decentralization is, and kind of getting people to embrace that that mentality, where you don't have to go to you don't have to think of one person as, you know, your economic savior or focus on one industry or focus on even, like, one electric company, for example, where where we look at decentralization for, say, mutual aid or, like, I I like to think I think about the Black Panthers a lot where they, where they had the free breakfast for children programs or the free clinic programs and things like that. These were very decentralized, programs because they they implemented it wasn't, you know, it wasn't government based and it wasn't company based. It was like Grassroots? Exactly. It was fully grassroots. It was fully, like, people coming together to make these things happen. And that kind of mentality, though those aspects of things, especially for countries like ours where we don't have, you know, large businesses and things like that. That should be the focus. Things like cooperatives, things like, you know, work worker democracy, worker ownership, people coming together to to live in a social manner.
So yeah. Maybe jumping off of that then, I'm curious. What would you hope that the blockchain space looks look like in the future in The Caribbean? How would you want to evolve?
So, like, even in terms of within and and I know with CBA, that's that's a very long term multi year effort. But if we can even really break ground in terms of a lot of education efforts, on a large scale, getting every country if, like, if we can make that framework happen or at least get as many countries as possible at least somewhat on the same page, I think that would be huge, and I I would love to see that. And just in terms of the education, there's also I I mean, blockchain is still technology at the end of the day, which means that most of it most of what goes on in the space is run by developers. And one of our biggest problems has always been and one of the reasons we haven't really been technical at all or or embrace technologies, we don't have a lot of developers. We have very few, and that's across the board. So our education business is gonna be for everybody, but definitely gonna focus on on developers in general. Because I think if we can really build, really get more developers, not just in the space, but in general, that would also add a lot more opportunity for people. I mean, not just people who go into being a dev, but also, you know, people who need to use tech who who even just need, like, websites. Because we have a lot of people still who have maybe small businesses, but they don't have any kind of technology base or or or website or anything like that. So it it is it is very it's coming from a very grassroots place, and I think we need to focus on that and make sure it's as grassroots focused as possible. And then, yeah, in the long term, let's say ten years from now, we could definitely have, you know, more trade within within the different islands that are, you know, blockchain based. This kind of settlement network where people are transferring money to each other, transferring goods to each other via blockchain or or say and I've been following NFTs a lot because I think it'll be awesome for the creative aspects. Because because our if there's anything our countries are known for, it's the creative side, whether it's art or music especially. And giving them, you know, more ownership because obviously whether it's gallery economics or or, music economics they're very extractive again, they're very centralized. So adding more options and availability for these, you know, small scale artists and entertainers and whatnot, it it it opens a whole new world, really. So there are a lot of different aspects that that just would make life so much easier. I would actually, one, break us away from, you know, that depends on tourism, that depends on on other other large scale countries and just give us that kind of that kind of ownership, I guess, is the best word to say at the end of the day. We're we're we're actually owning our own economy as a regular individual.
Yeah. There's the the, the potential of technology, right, is that I think partially you can have economic activity not be confined to a particular geographical space. Because maybe someone may argue that because of The Caribbean's particular geography, it's difficult to, develop economically potentially. But with the advent of the Internet where people can interact with each other in economic type of relationships through across the world without needing to have a to live, you know, right next to the person or live in the same city or the same country, like, it potentially it has the potential to really disrupt the way that, the way that the economy flows, right, the the dependencies in the economy. And then having this built in layer of blockchain, of being able to trade, you know, value or whatever we wanna call it, money, currency, it then gives the potential for countries like or people who live in countries like The Caribbean, or now if they are able to provide some sort of economic service in the digital space, they're no longer confined to geography and, like, waiting for tourists to come in so that they can give them money.
Exactly. I mean, you'd be surprised how many of our small businesses are or even, you know, workers are are fully based on waiting for people to come in and where if there are no people coming in, there's there's literally no economic activity. So Yeah. Just just opening that digital sphere up. Again, going back to to the artist example, like, you can either have an artist who does, you know, port what do you call them? Caricatures for for tourists when they come in. Or they go on, like, one of the metaverses, like like the central line, for example, and have, you know, do a do a caricature of someone online, do like an NFT or something like that. And one small kind of crazy example. Right? But but it it it totally opens up so many opportunities for people to to just to operate, really, and to engage with people in a different sense.
Ideally, we would like I I suppose you would like the blockchain would be able to increase economic opportunity and be able to, improve the conditions in The Caribbean. But what type of obstacles do you expect or maybe have you already run into when trying to, you know, evangelize or trying to educate and try to create this particular blockchain space that you would like to see?
Honestly, directly related to our to our main two mandates, the the education and public policy. Just the idea of so the space here has been interesting just in terms of obviously, it's been very small, but, you know, people are slowly slowly understanding, you know, how important it is and what it's used for. And it's it's basically gone from trying to evangelize pretty much to saying, oh, wait. No. Yes. This is good technology, but you do, like, don't just jump into this for, like, a get rich quick thing or, oh, no. That's a scam. So it's it's kind of it's kind of shifted somewhat, especially, like, you know, around it 02/2018, where that there was more of an embrace of the space but for the wrong reasons. So, thankfully, you know, it's it's less of that now. I think just because, you know, crypto hasn't I mean, we're back to it now. But it it's kinda shifted from trying to get people into space and then kind of pushing them more towards the, like, the practical use cases, for example. And I think that's still where we are now where we we're definitely been trying to focus on getting people understand what the technology really means, like, what they can what people can actually do with it, what we as a country or as a region can actually do with it. And that that's always an uphill battle. Right? But I think it's something we have to fight through, and I think we will. And then on the other side, it's just getting regulators on board, getting government people on board. And you it's interesting because you get people who are really for it, but aren't gonna make any move toward it. So it's like, yeah, we agree with you, but we don't care. Yeah.
But do you because I would imagine maybe potentially there could be some sort of, I don't know, economic player, I don't know, like the Western Union or someone, like, some sort of, yeah, big company who relies on, you know, taking advantage of this particular situation, who maybe knows that if the government were to look more into using blockchain and would change the way, that people are able to send money, then, you know, that company would lose out. Could you imagine, you know, a particular type of economic force like that that would maybe tell say, hey, guys. Slow down. Hold up. Let's not look into this too much.
That's a really good question. And it it also depends on, like, the state of the country or the state of the region. Right? Where people may push back, but it gets so dire that we're like, no. We're gonna do this anyway, which is what I think is more likely to happen. But to answer that question, I if there was any and let's just I'm just gonna speak for The Bahamas here. If there's any pushback, it would it could be on, say, the the electricity front where we have one, main electric company, and, obviously, a kind of a push towards them having less power, no pun intended, would would be would be more of a threat to them. Right? But to the I I think it's also gotten to the point though where, again, it it's such a heavy issue that that kind of pushback gets bypassed, is which is what I think will happen. I mean, we'll see. But, yeah, I think the the need for it is gonna be so great that there's no other choice but to embrace it.
Nice. I think it was,
Very optimistic, I will say. Yeah. At least in terms of embracing the space within a few years, within, like, two years. Yeah. And I and and just the when people really see what the what CBDCs do, I think, in general, that'll add a lot of, drive to explore blockchain. So I think that's gonna be a net benefit for everybody.
Cool. That's all I have in terms of questions besides the last one is where can people keep up with your work? But I don't know if there I guess we we cover pretty much everything, I think.
I think so. And, yeah, just just if you want to if you wanna reach out, I'm on I'm mainly on Twitter, Steph Delev, s t e f d e l e v, on Twitter. Our website is cbahub.org. So you can find us pretty easily, and I'm I'm pretty much on every social media. So
Is there a way for people to, to give to the CBA or to to support it directly if they want to?
Yeah. Message me. We are we're finalizing a few things, and and we're setting up, the donations
actually within a few days. So definitely reach out. Cool. Well, thanks a lot for, for coming on, and, good luck in all your efforts.
Appreciate that. Thanks a lot. Hope it was helpful.